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Drawing Parts Together the Philosophy of Education of Nel Noddings

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Drawing Parts Together the Philosophy of Education of Nel Noddings UTBILDNING & DEMOKRATI 2006, VOL 15, NR 1, 13–32 TEMA: PEDAGOGISK FILOSOFI, ETIK OCH POLITIK Drawing parts together The philosophy of education of Nel Noddings Lynda Stone This essay honors the career and writings of American philosopher of Education, Nel Noddings on her first visit to Sweden in Spring 2006. The title is taken from a recent interview in which she discussed connections between her biography and scholarly contributions. The interview aug- ments analysis of major texts from Noddings out of which the essay’s author posits her ‘philosophy of education.’ Following an introduction and biographical situating, sections focus on education and schools, care theory and teaching, and approaches and thematics within her philo- sophic writings. The essay closes with recognition of Noddings’s interna- tional significance in both philosophy and education. Keywords: care theory, teaching, philosophy of education. Education … [is] a mode of living and learn- ing together … a way of being in the world.1 American philosopher of education, Nel Noddings highlights a turn- ing point in her life as the moment when she decided to “draw both parts together”, specifically the personal and philosophical, in a fo- cus on caring as academic cornerstone.2 From the late seventies, this preoccupation with ethics, always tied to education, has resulted in Lynda Stone is Professor, Philosophy of Education, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA. Nel Noddings was her Ph.D. advisor at Stanford University and remains her mentor and friend. Stone publishes interna- tionally in her own right. E-mail: [email protected] LYNDA STONE international renown. Today Noddings is Professor Emerita and still greatly active as author, speaker and advisor. The essay celebrates Noddings’s first visit to Sweden by presenting her life and work for a Scandinavian audience. In the incident above, the parts drawn together are aspects of her life as student and teacher, wife and mother as they influence what she desires to write as a philos- opher of education. In what follows, this personal background is uti- lized to interpret her “philosophy of education”. This statement seeks to honor Noddings, to present a partial vision of her work; it is not critical in the philosophical sense. Instead it is an interpretation penned by a former student and continuing friend. To date, she has not specifi- cally written such a “philosophy” even as she authored a book entitled Philosophy of Education (1995), itself a broad introduction to the disciplinary field in which her own writings are situated. One place possibly to begin this exposition is with a general “defi- nition”. While it is apparent that Noddings has developed and does utilize a meaning of education, for her there is no “ism” that encapsu- lates what she believes about philosophy and/or education, no “Nod- dingsism” that results from many years of systematic attention to a life domain. Neither is she to be identified with a single philosophical label, a tradition. Even as this is asserted, she does acknowledge roots in prag- matism and existentialism. An appropriate assessment overall is that as an educator and a significant philosopher in her own right, what she has come to believe and write is singularly and identifiably her own. The essay demonstrates how parts of Noddings’s life have been drawn together to produce a very significant corpus of work. Out of this, what is posited is a general “philosophy of education”. This is appropriate because education is always central to what she writes as a philosopher. In the following, here are sections and foci: (1) Biography that situates her life and career within its education context; (2) Education and schools that connects biographic and philo- sophical elements to each of these central domains; (3) Care theory and teaching that continues education connection through her principal phil- osophical contribution; (4) Philosophy that highlights her approach to writing as well as emphasizes a couple of thematics that appear in her scholarship; and (5) Significance as conclusion to the essay. Biography Now in her seventies, Nel Noddings has spent her life in education and educating – as student, teacher, mother, professor, scholar. This section overviews formal aspects of her education biography. As a girl, she 14 DRAWING PARTS TOGETHER: THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION OF NEL NODDINGS attended public primary and secondary schools, the base for a lifelong interest. Undergraduate and graduate education consisted of the fol- lowing: a bachelors degree in mathematics and physical science, a mas- ters in mathematics, and a doctorate in education with an emphasis in educational philosophy and theory attending respectively in the US Montclair State College and Rutgers University in New Jersey and Stan- ford University in California. Her adult working life began in 1949 as a teacher in what is now middle school and then in high school. She worked in public schools across nearly twenty years, serving not only as teacher but also as department chair, assistant principal, curriculum supervisor, and university instructor. Following completion of her Ph.D. study in 1973, she held faculty positions at Pennsylvania State Univer- sity and the University of Chicago before joining Stanford University in the late 1970s. At Stanford key career points include earning tenure and promotion to Professor in 1986, being appointed Lee L. Jacks Professor of Child Education in 1992, and becoming Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Acting Dean in 1990 and 1992, each for two years. There she moved to Professor Emerita status in 1998 and since that time has additionally affiliated with Teachers College, Columbia University, Colgate University, University of Southern Maine, and East- ern Michigan University, the last three in named positions. As scholar and professor, Noddings is inordinately accomplished, a senior leader in education worldwide. To date she has authored 15 books, among them her scholarly bookend works on the ethics of care, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics & Moral Education in 1984 and 2003 and Starting at Home: Caring and Social Policy in 2002. For the focus of this essay especially relevant also are The Challenge to Care in Schools, 1992 and 2005, Philosophy of Education, 1995 and forthcoming 2006, and Happiness and Education, 2003. A new book, Critical Lessons: What Our Schools Should Teach, is to be published in 2006. Various works have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Ko- rean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Turkish. In addition, Noddings has penned over 130 journal articles, for- wards and reviews and over 70 book chapters, encyclopedia entries, and conference proceedings. Journals in which her work has appeared include Educational Theory, Journal of Philosophy of Education, The- ory into Practice, Teachers College Record, Harvard Educational Re- view, Educational Researcher, Review of Educational Research, Jour- nal of Research in Mathematics Education, Hypatia, and Journal of Social Philosophy. Beginning in 1975 and continuing to the present, she has delivered keynotes, addresses, papers, and talks almost too nu- merous to count in the USA and Canada before school, college and university, professional and public groups. Internationally she has spo- 15 LYNDA STONE ken in Argentina, Germany, Israel, Japan, Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and now in Sweden. Finally Noddings has held significant elective office, as member and President of the National Academy of Education and as President of the Philosophy of Education Society and the John Dewey Society. She has reviewed for and served on editorial boards of over 30 journals. She has received many awards for outstanding scholarship and professional service including several honorary degrees. Examples of the former include the Distinguished Educator Award from the Association of Teacher Educa- tors and the Lifetime Achievement Award from Division B, Curriculum, of the American Educational Research Association. A comment about the character of her scholarship also is pertinent, a topic returned to subsequently. Noddings is one of a few “crossover philosophers” of education, well-recognized beyond professional edu- cation. She is read and respected because of the sophistication of her thoughts and, as well, the cogency and everyday concreteness of her views. Her writing has a recognizable style. It is crisp and clear even as she explicates complex thoughts; it is sprinkled with anecdotes and illus- trations, in part from a personal approach with which readers identify. She is herself extremely well and widely read, pulling from many sources in her writing but especially from various philosophical traditions and authors and from literature. In addition to these general features, a value premise underpins her philosophic pursuits, tied to how she believes life ought to be lived. In writing this means positing moderation itself, present- ing “both sides” and alternatives to viewpoints, and always – always – asking questions of readers and of herself. Another aspect of her writing is its own evolution: across texts, key ideas and concepts are introduced, reappear and are modified or added to. Thus a significant conceptual base is prominent in her writings. A summing stance exemplifies in gen- eral the character of her scholarship: this is that even as her views are strong, Noddings neither offers nor calls for certainty in dealing with both philosophical and educational matters.
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